


Some Much Needed Rest

by xblightning



Series: Adam du Mortain x Frankie Fairbanks [2]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Book 2, Conflict Resolution, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Pining, frankie was just very worried about him ok??, lots of pining...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xblightning/pseuds/xblightning
Summary: After the rescue mission, Frankie just wants Adam to rest—but nothing is ever that easy when it comes to Adam, and naturally an argument between the two ensues.
Relationships: Detective/Adam du Mortain, Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Series: Adam du Mortain x Frankie Fairbanks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2157789
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51





	Some Much Needed Rest

Frankie knew it was only a matter of time until Adam crawled out of that hospital bed, and she knew that when he did, it would likely be far too soon. But she still wasn’t expecting to see him walk through the doors of the warehouse’s common room after only _one_ day of rest.

Frankie stood abruptly from her perch on the edge of the couch when he strolled in, her eyes wide as if she had seen a ghost. “ _Adam?_ ” she gaped.

Adam raised a brow at her odd greeting. “Hello, Detective,” he said in that familiar cool, stilted tone.

Instead of the hospital gown she had seen him in last, Adam was now dressed casually in just a t-shirt and combat trousers. If not for the white bandages creeping up his neck and down his right arm, Frankie never would have guessed that anything was wrong.

But something was wrong. Adam might be alert and walking, but she had seen his injuries firsthand, and she knew how bad they were. Even with his healing abilities, there was no way he was fine, just like that. He should be in the hospital, resting.

So why wasn’t he?

It was a stupid question to ask herself. Frankie took one look at him and she knew why. It was because he was a stubborn idiot who was too prideful to admit he was hurt. Normally, Frankie found that kind of endearing about him, but after what he had just been through—no, what she had just been through, seeing him hurt, worrying herself sick—she found it to be considerably less so.

In fact, it made her angry.

“I didn’t expect you to be back so soon,” Frankie said, trying not to snap the words but not entirely succeeding. Anyone else may have missed it, but not Adam. He had a lot of experience arguing with Frankie, and recognized her shift in tone instantly.

“I was released early,” he said, looking down at her with a frown.

“Really?” She raised a skeptical brow. “Because when I spoke to your doctor last, he strongly recommended that you take at least few days of rest."

Adam rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, and Frankie tried very hard not to notice the way the fabric of his t-shirt stretched over his arms. No, she didn’t notice it at all. “I don't know what my doctors told you while I was unconscious, Francine, but I'm perfectly fine,” Adam said.

“ _Fine_?” Frankie huffed. “Apparently we have a very different way of pronouncing the word _unreasonable_.”

Adam visibly bristled, his shoulders stiffening as he narrowed his eyes at Frankie. Unreasonable was something he always called other people, and oh, how he hated to have it thrown right back at him. Beside her, Mason let out a low whistle and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, glancing between the two of them with a raised brow while Felix grinned and rubbed his hands together excitedly.

But before Adam could open his mouth and respond to Frankie with the scathing retort she knew was on the tip of his tongue, Nate stood up as well, placing himself between the two of them.

“However we might feel about it, Adam is here now,” Nate said, his hands raised in a placating gesture. “There’s nothing that we can do about that now. So let’s just work, shall we?”

Frankie frowned at this but complied, sinking back into the cushion of her seat with a frown and crossed arms. This fight was futile, she knew, and however angry she might be, she wasn’t willing to put Nate through any more stress. Despite being worried about Adam himself, Nate had been her rock throughout this whole ordeal. This was the least she could do for him.

“Good! I'm glad we could settle this,” Nate smiled, but it was obvious to them all that it was strained. “Adam, we were just discussing possible locations to move the maa-alused if they accept the treaty.”

Nate gestured to the map-littered coffee table they were all sitting around, and Adam’s eyes lingered on Frankie only a moment longer before he dragged them away. “Show me our options.”

As the two of them sat down across from her and began going over the maps, Frankie felt her phone buzz with an incoming text. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced down at the name on her lock screen.

Elidor.

 _My least favorite patient has escaped,_ the fae nurse said. She could practically feel his exasperation through the screen.

 _Oh, I’m aware,_ Frankie replied.

Elidor’s response was immediate. _I don’t know whether to be worried he’s gone or impressed that he even managed to stand up and walk out of here._

So it was true, then. Adam wasn’t fine. Frankie glanced at him from across the coffee table as he nodded along to Nate’s explanation. He seemed perfectly normal—that is, until he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Not a lot, and with only a small, suppressed wince, but Frankie didn’t miss it.

Her heart squeezed in her chest. God, why couldn’t he just take care of himself? If not for his own sake, then at least for the sake of the people that cared about him.

Because Frankie did care about him. A lot. She cared about him far more than she had ever realized, and far more than she was ready to admit to herself. She just knew that she needed him to be well again, to go back to throwing tree trunks and accidentally breaking doors by closing them too hard. She needed the way he smiled at her when no one else was looking, the way he—

“It’s settled, then,” Adam said suddenly, snapping her out of her thoughts. “We’ll scout the cave. It seems the most suitable location for the maa-alused.”

Frankie watched as the four vampires around her nodded and stood up suddenly. Nate grabbed his leather jacket off the back of the couch while Mason put out his cigarette, and Felix bounded towards the door like an excited puppy, Adam following slightly behind.

“Wait!” Frankie said, the words rushing out of her to stop them from leaving.

They all turn to look at her.

Adam was not going to be able to keep up with them, but he was almost certainly going to overexert himself trying. What if he worsened his injuries? What if he collapsed? What if they got ambushed, and he was too weak to defend himself?

Frankie had to say something, _anything_ to get Adam to stay. But if she implied too strongly that he wasn't fit for duty, he would storm out right then and there just to prove to her that he was, and trying to rouse his withered sense of self-preservation wasn’t going to cut it, either. No, she needed a reason he’d find tactical sense in as the leader of Unit Bravo. That was the only way to get through to him.

Think, think, _think_.

“Adam,” she said slowly, drawing out the two syllables of his name to give herself that much longer, “you’ve missed a lot. Why don’t you stay and let me catch you up on everything that’s been going on?”

Damn it. That was an awful excuse. There was no way he’d—

“Okay,” Adam nodded after barely a moment of consideration. “I’ll stay.”

Nate glanced nervously between the two of them, but thankfully he didn’t object. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll be back soon.”

Frankie let out an internal sigh of relief as the three of them walked out of the room without another comment, leaving her and Adam alone.

Adam moved to the window and leaned against it, staring out into the forest with his arms crossed over his chest. Frankie wondered with a pang of anxiety if he was having trouble standing on his own.

“Tell me what I missed.”

Frankie strolled over to where he stood and seated herself on the windowsill beside him, leaving a comfortable amount of space between the two of them. “The maa-alused seem to be behaving,” she said. “No one new has been afflicted with the disease, but nobody has recovered, either.”

“I suppose that’s good news,” he replied. He was still looking out the window, and the sunlight cast his face in a warm, amber glow. For a moment Frankie might have even dared to say he looked gentle—at least until he asked, “And your friend? How is he?”

He was talking about Bobby, she realized. “Oh. He’s… stable,” she said, deciding it was probably best not to mention the fact that she’d been going to the facility nearly every day to check on him. She hated Bobby, despised him, honestly, but it was because of her weakness that he had even been in her apartment that night.

“Good,” Adam said. His lips tightened into a thin line, and Frankie wondered if somehow he knew about her visits. “What else?”

“Well, with Bobby in a coma, we’ve been spared any more headlines. So the town is relatively calm, considering there’s been an outbreak of a deadly supernatural disease.”

Adam nodded and waited for her to continue, but Frankie realized with a sudden burst of panic that she had nothing else to say. Her excuse to get him to stay with her was just that: an excuse. After all, he really was only gone for one day. There wasn’t much to catch him up on. At least nothing that warranted him staying behind just to talk to her.

Frankie rubbed her lips together nervously as she searched her mind for something else to tell him. “The mayor’s annual charity dinner is coming up,” she said, remembering the invitations that had arrived that morning. “He invited all of us.”

“That’s not really important right now. I need to know what’s imperative to Unit Bravo’s success on this mission.”

Damn. What else could she tell him? “Uh… well, Felix ruined another load of Mason’s laundry. Nate had to step in to stop him from killing Felix. You probably need to have a conversation with them.”

Confusion and mild annoyance flickered in Adam’s eyes as he looked down at her. “I said imperative to the mission.”

“This is. I mean, you know as well as any how personal relationships impact the way our unit works together in the field.”

Adam glared at her. “Francine…”

“Oh, and we’re thinking about starting a weekly movie night for the unit.”

He whirled to face her completely. He was definitely irritated. “ _This_ is the important information you wanted me to stay for?” he asked incredulously.

"You’re not missing anything, Adam. That cave has been there for thousands of years, it will still be there tomorrow," she shot back at him. And then, because she just couldn’t help herself, "whereas you might not be, if you overexert yourself."

Frankie watched his expression change from irritation to barely controlled anger as he put the pieces together, realizing that she never really had anything to tell him. That this was a continuation of their almost-argument from before. “I am not going to argue with you about my health, Francine,” he growled, as if it were so very outlandish that she was concerned about him, and then promptly turned and started walking towards the door.

Leaving, like always.

And like always, Frankie followed after him.

“Where are you going?” she snapped, no longer bothering to conceal her anger or control her voice. Not like him.

“If I leave now, I might still be able to catch up with them,” he said over his shoulder.

For a few seconds, Frankie stood there speechless. Then, without even realizing what she was doing, she ran in front of him and planted herself between him and the door. “You can’t.”

He stared at her flatly, but he didn’t move. “Francine—“

“Please, don’t,” she pleaded. All of the anger and frustration flushed out of her body, now replaced by worry.

"I have no need for rest, as I have told you many times."

She looked at him desperately. "I saw the wounds, Adam. You can't just sit there and tell me you're fit to go back to work right after that.” She swallowed hard. “After you've had your blood all over me."

Every time Frankie closed her eyes, she could still see the way his body had looked, laying there on the cold cement floor of the sewers. The way his chest rose with ragged, irregular, shallow breaths as she cradled him, how the blood had pooled beneath on his shirt, thick and dark in the low light.

"Do you have any idea what it was like for me?" Frankie asked, voice cracking wetly. " _I almost lost you—_ "

Something flashed in Adam’s eyes, and he stepped closer. “Yes, I do know what that’s like, actually.”

Oh. Frankie’s hand drifted up to brush the scar on her neck, as it always did when she thought of Murphy. “It’s not the same.”

“It is, actually.”

“No, it’s not. Murphy wasn’t your fault.”

“One could argue that my failure to keep you safe—“

Something inside Frankie snapped. “You were hurt because of me, Adam!” she shouted, and his mouth snapped shut. “It was because of my choice that you almost died!”

He looked at her for a long moment before speaking. “You did as I wanted. Did what was needed,” he told her eventually, voice level.

“What you needed was help, and I made the choice not to, knowing that you were outnumbered. Knowing that you might get hurt.” Her hand drifted to his injured arm, to the bandages that it was wrapped in, brushing over it gently. “And you did.”

Adam stiffened under her touch, but Frankie didn’t notice. There was a hot, hard lump in her throat. It hurt to breathe around it, and the breakable, panicked feeling that had been in her chest since the moment Adam had walked in was swelling, a balloon about to burst.

She was about to cry, she realized with sudden horror. Frankie pulled her hand back and looked away from him sharply. She had to get out of there immediately, before she made an even bigger fool of herself.

“Go join them, then,” Frankie said, turning away. She would just flee to the kitchen and hope he didn't follow. “I don’t care.”

Before she could walk away, a large hand closed around her shoulder, and Adam pulled her into him. She collided with the hard wall of his chest with a hard exhale, and it took her a long moment of standing there against him with her forehead pressed against his shoulder to realize that he was trying to _hug_ her.

This was… new. Frankie could feel the tension radiating off of him, but he didn’t move away. One hand was resting again between her shoulder blades, stiff and wary, as if he wasn’t entirely sure where to put it, and it wasn’t until she wound her arms around his middle and held him back that he seemed to relax a little into the embrace.

"I am sorry you had to make that choice," he spoke quietly, as though divulging a secret. "And I am sorry you had to see me like that."

His breath moved them both, slow and deep, and she felt his cheek brush the top of her head as he pulled her closer. That distinct antiseptic smell of the hospital still clung to him, but it was oddly comforting.

“You’re sorry, but you’re still not going to rest, are you?” she murmured against him.

“I won’t get back into bed,” he said. “But I’ll stay.”

Frankie groaned, burying her face into his shoulder. “I hate you.”

She didn’t see the sad smile that touched Adam’s lips, but she did hear the words he spoke into her hair. “It would be easier for me, if that were true.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> follow me on tumblr @blightning, sometimes i draw frankie and adam so you can see more of ‘em there <3


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